Tuesday, October 12, 2010

My youngest son has entered into the first grade this year and while he has improved dramatically from the start of Kindergarten he still can benefit greatly from improving his reading skills.

Stepping Stones Together is a wonderful online program designed by Dr. Erik Burton, that teaches reading skills along with providing children with fun reading activities. The Stepping Stones Together program focuses on popular children themed stories, which utilize 220 high-frequency words and 95 nouns. Reading experts agree that children need to learn these words in order to become successful readers.

Those of you with children In school know that teachers are always stressing the importance of high frequency words and your children may even come home with those practice books. You know the one they staple together and create themselves. I love these books because they teach from memory in a way by repeating the words. These books were a great tool in helping my son grasp the concepts of reading.Stepping stones provides the same books online in a variety of categories so your child can choose to read what he or she is most interested in. These books are available in three levels A-C. "A" being of course the starting point.So to begin you and your child will select one of the pre-selected stories at your child’s appropriate level from your personal homepage. Your child should complete this book twice before moving on and as a good rule your child should be reading for about 15-20 minutes a day. You will read the title of the story to your child, asking them to make a prediction about the story and what they might know about a particular topic. It's always nice to get your child interested and as much a part of the reading process as possible. You and your child read together, or you read the first time, through a simple 8-sentence story with explicitly obvious text illustration correspondence. Next have your child try the story on his or her own. When they get stuck make sure they know that it is OK, and help them with sounding out the words.

What a really liked about the program was the comprehension questions at the end of the stories because this is something my son struggled with. Stepping Stones provides and incentive chart that you can print out and reward your child with a sticker upon completion of each book.Another bonus is that these black and white stories are also available to you, to print out and keep on hand.

You can purchase a 90 day subscribtion to Stepping Stones Together for 19.99 or get a full year for 39.99

One lucky reader will win a free 1-year membership to Stepping Stones Together! You can win by doing one or more of the following, just be sure to leave a separate comment for each way that you enter.

Winner was Grandma Bonnie said... 4

I subscribe to your email

Giveaway will end on October 25th at 11:59pm EST. I will choose 1 winner via Random.org. I will post the winner's name and email them. Winner will have 48 hours to reply. If I don't receive a response within 48 hrs, I will choose another winner. *Please remember to leave your email address so I can contact you if you win. If I can't contact you, I'll have to choose someone else. I do check entries if you say your following, tweeting, subscribing etc and are not your entry will be disqualified.

This was not a paid post and honest opinions were used. A guest subscription was given at no cost in order to complete this review. However this in no way effects the honesty of my post. These are my opinions and yours may differ.